Thomas Douglas James Cleverdon (17 January 1903 – 1 October 1987) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

radio producer and bookseller. In both fields he was associated with numerous leading cultural figures.

Personal life

He was educated at

Bristol Grammar School Bristol Grammar School (BGS) is a 4–18 mixed, independent day school in Bristol, England. It was founded in 1532 by Royal Charter for the teaching of 'good manners and literature', endowed by wealthy Bristol merchants Robert and Nicholas Thorn ...

and

Jesus College, Oxford Jesus College (in full: Jesus College in the University of Oxford of Queen Elizabeth's Foundation) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship St ...

. At Oxford he became friends with

John Betjeman Sir John Betjeman (; 28 August 190619 May 1984) was an English poet, writer, and broadcaster. He was Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death. He was a founding member of The Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture, ...

, and was taken up by

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...

. He then set up a bookshop in

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, modelled on the shop Birrell & Garnett in London, with signboards designed by

Eric Gill Arthur Eric Rowton Gill, (22 February 1882 – 17 November 1940) was an English sculptor, letter cutter, typeface designer, and printmaker. Although the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' describes Gill as ″the greatest artist-cra ...

and Roger Fry. The shop specialized in fine printing and first editions from the sixteenth century onward. From there he also published. He married Elinor Nest Lewis in 1944; she was a secretary at the BBC, and they provided a social focus for producers and performers. The eldest of their three children is Dame

Julia Cleverdon Dame Julia Charity Cleverdon (born 19 April 1950)Dame Jul ...

. He was the President of the

Double Crown Club The Double Crown Club is a dining club and society of printers, publishers, book designers and illustrators in London that was founded in 1924. Among its early members was the typographer Stanley Morison. According to Sir Sydney Roberts, writing in ...

in the 1950s. He died on 1 October 1987, and is buried with Nest on the eastern side of

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...

Grave of Douglas and Nest Cleverdon in Highgate Cemetery

Publishing and Radio work

His first book published was a collection of engravings by

, who later drew the first version of what would become Gill Sans for him for use on signs and notices for the shop. This was later published by Skelton's Press as a ''Book of Alphabets for Douglas Cleverdon''. In 1927 he commissioned David Jones to make a set of copper engravings for ''

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' (originally ''The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere'') is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–1798 and published in 1798 in the first edition of ''Lyrical Ballad ...

''. Other books published include ''Vigils'' by

Siegfried Sassoon Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967) was an English war poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both describ ...

, ''Uncle Doherty'' by

T. F. Powys Theodore Francis Powys (20 December 1875 – 27 November 1953) – published as T. F. Powys – was a British novelist and short-story writer."Powys, Theodore Francis" in Christine L. Krueger, ''Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Ce ...

and ''Art and Love'' with engravings by Gill. He published a succession of very finely printed catalogues of books for sale from the bookshop, ranging from early Caxton Press first editions of

Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...

to modern first editions by

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author, best known for his novels, particularly ''A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910), and ''A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous short stori ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

and T. S. Eliot. In 1939 he joined the BBC, where he co-created ''

The Brains Trust ''The Brains Trust'' was an informational BBC radio and later television programme popular in the United Kingdom during the 1940s and 1950s, on which a panel of experts tried to answer questions sent in by the audience. History The series was ...

'' with fellow producer

Howard Thomas Howard Thomas CBE (5 March 1909 – 6 November 1986) was a Welsh radio producer and television executive. Early career Thomas began his career typing invoices for a firm of wire-drawers in Manchester. While doing that job, he taught himself to ...

. From 1945 he was in the department headed by

Laurence Gilliam Laurence Duval Gilliam, OBE (4 March 1907 – 15 November 1964) was a BBC radio producer. Gilliam worked with the Gramophone Company, before transferred to the BBC drama department in 1933, where he was responsible for features. At the end of Wor ...

. Later, in 1948, Cleverdon would adapt and produce David Jones's major poem ''In Parenthesis'' for radio, with

Richard Burton Richard Burton (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable pe ...

and

Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...

, with music by

Elizabeth Poston Elizabeth Poston (24 October 1905 – 18 March 1987) was an English composer, pianist and writer. Early life and career Poston was born in Highfield House in Pin Green, which is now the site of Hampson Park in Stevenage. In 1914, she moved ...

, for BBC Radio's

Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual f ...

. In 1954 Cleverdon produced ''

Under Milk Wood ''Under Milk Wood'' is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, commissioned by the BBC and later adapted for the stage. A film version, ''Under Milk Wood'' directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released in 1972, and another adaptation of ...

'', the premier of the Dylan Thomas dramatic poem; according to

Jenny Abramsky Dame Jennifer Gita Abramsky, (born 7 October 1946) is a British media producer and philanthropist. She was chairman of the UK's National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF). The NHMF makes grants to preserve heritage of outstanding national importance ...

it had taken seven years to persuade Thomas to write it. At around this time he also worked with Henry Reed on the

Hilda Tablet Hilda Tablet is a fictitious "twelve-tone composeress" created by Henry Reed in a series of radio comedy plays for the British Broadcasting Corporation's Third Programme. Hilda is the inventor of '' musique concrète renforcée'' (literally, "r ...

cycle of plays. Cleverdon collected folk songs in the south of England for the BBC in the 1940s. He produced programmes for them featuring

Max Beerbohm Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist under the signature Max. He first became known in the 1890s as a dandy and a humorist. He was the drama critic for the '' Saturday ...

Ted Hughes Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...

Stevie Smith Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971), was an English poet and novelist. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A play, '' Stevie'' by Hugh Whitemore, ba ...

and many other poets.

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, ''The ...

wrote ''Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices'' for Cleverdon, in March 1962. Cleverdon was a friend and near neighbour of the writer

Jillian Becker Jillian Becker (born 2 June 1932) is a South African-born British author, journalist, and lecturer. She specialises in research about terrorism, having written '' Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang'' (1977), amo ...

, who was a friend also of Plath, and it was at Becker's house in Barnsbury Square that Plath spent the last few days of her life. After Plath's suicide, Becker looked after Plath's children until relatives arrived, and Nest Cleverdon supplied extra clothes for them. ''The Man Who Collected Sounds'' was produced by Cleverdon in 1966, with music composed by

George Newson George Newson (born 27 July 1932) is an English composer and pianist who made some important contributions to British electronic and avant garde music during the 1960s and 1970s and has subsequently composed large and small-scale works in many mus ...

with resources from the

BBC Radiophonic Workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering work in electroni ...

. There are at least 232 scripts produced by Cleverdon in the BBC archive. After leaving the BBC, he was involved with a fine publishing imprint, Clover Hill Editions, which he had established with Will Carter.

Autobiography

*"Fifty Years"; in: ''The Private Library'', 1978. Pinner, Middlesex: Private Libraries Association; pp. 51–83.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cleverdon, Douglas 1903 births 1987 deaths Burials at Highgate Cemetery Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford BBC radio producers English booksellers English radio producers People educated at Bristol Grammar School 20th-century English businesspeople